Getting Old...

Saturday night was Halloween. I spent it watching my son scare little children on our front porch, then watching Sleepy Hallow with him and his buddy. Then, around 11pm, I wandered off to bed and fell asleep.

I knew this was a mistake. Any time I go to bed before 1am is a mistake. Because I wake up early and can't go back to sleep.

Sunday morning. I woke up at 7am... (or at least that's what my clock said). I tossed and turned for 30 mins before finally calling it and getting up. I walked into the living room, turned on the XBox to play some games and... I noticed the cable box and the XBox were both saying it was 6:30 am.

I cursed myself for not getting to enjoy the extra hour, cursed my retched, old body for not being young and sleeping in until noon.

I don't know what happened to my youth. I used to be able to sleep-in without issue, any day, any time. It doesn't seem like that long ago when I wasn't worrying about every little mole or bump on my body. Often now, I can't go all night long without having to wake up and urinate. I remember once being able to wrestle with my kids and not rub at my back for 2 hours after a smackdown match.

I used to count the years like a badge. Now I think of them as half way to year XX. This year's birthday will bring me half way to 70...

A year according to my Social Security pamphlet is one year before I can retire.

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I Get It

New York Times Best Selling author Patrick Rothfuss ranted on his blog today about how some days, he hates his job as a writer. And the frustrations of writing something and people criticizing authors on how "easy" their job is. A while back, I had a change of heart when it comes to my criticisms toward authors that take 10 years to push out one book.

Pretty much what Pat said today is why I've had a change of heart.

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Borderline Game of the Year

Somehow Borderlands slipped under my radar until about a week before it was released. When I read the premise of it, I said, "Interesting... But I'll wait for the reviews." When I read the reviews (on average in the mid 80s), I said, "I'll give it a try." After I gave it a try, I said, "OMFG I can't wait to get home tonight and play this game some more!!!1!"

My addiction for this game has actually earned a "Wow, your wanting to play XBox again?" look from my wife this week.

The game is fun. Essentially Diablo type loot drops and WoW like quests mixed into a First Person Shooter where you don't have to worry about mana. Just point the gun and kill. The quest system is basic. Click A to accept, look at map to see where to go. That's all I need.

That's one thing that prevented me from playing Fallout. I just didn't care about talking through the stupid dialogue to get my fetch/kill quests. If I want dialogue, I'll play... well no game really has good dialogue options these days. Bioware tries too... but most of the time their dialogue tree ends up being more like a dialogue totem pole. You still end up with the same results whether you insult the person or stroke their ego.

In a lot of ways I miss the Baldur's Gate dialogue, you could actually play an entirely different game with that game's choices. I remember playing that with a buddy and we were clicking thru the dialogue of a scene, next thing you know the whole bar is attacking us because we weren't paying attention to the insulting dialogue we chose.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Fantastic game if you're looking for a nice RPG/Shooter. Gearbox pulled off the merger of these two genres which has been tried before and failed miserably.

I've been playing co-op, which is the way to play this game. I decided to go with a support class character. And with the upgrades and spec I'm choosing, I play a character that refreshes the health and ammo of all the other folks I'm partied with. Considering the amount of ammo we blow through, this was an excellent choice of character to play. I may not be getting all the kills but I keep us killing.

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The Apology Post

It's been a while since I posted. I don't even tweet much. Or Facebook. Why's that?

Well there isn't one thing that has prevented me from posting. It's been a culmination of things. Several times I've started a post only to have it end up being a rant. I blame this on fall.

I don't like autumn much. Something about the dying action of life around me tends to depress me and send me into brooding. Give me a month or three and I'll get out of this funk. Usually it ends somewhere around January. It's cyclical. It's not an emotion that sends me spiraling down any path. I don't drink more or less than usual. I don't beat anyone. In fact there isn't much I do publicly that can be seen.

I just become withdrawn and reserved, numb. Or flop to emotional while watching a movie. I saw Marley and Me a few weeks back... Niagara Falls. I don't know why I watched it. I knew what was going to happen. I wasn't interested in the story. But regardless, I watched it and slobbered on my sofa like a big sloppy moose.

Where am I with the book? Well not writing it, that's for sure. I tore apart chapter 1 and started to completely rewrite it. This is the same Chapter 1 that used to be Chapter 2. No, there's no writer's block involved. Just a simple, "Not in the writing zone," moment. I did this last fall, I hid behind WoW as my excuse, the part where it was autumn didn't help. And while it's true that I'm playing WoW at the moment. I'm not anywhere near as fanatical as I once was.

There's no raiding, no 5+ hours at the computer breaking only when the raid leader says you can pee. No. Now it's just a "casual PvP killing newbs when I feel like it/leveling up alts" experience. Nothing that keeps me strapped to the chair. I've avoided raiding for over a month or 2 now. I'm calling this one safe from the usual, OMG crazy WoW phase.

I'm just filling time.

Waiting to get over the emotional funk.

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Movie Review: Deadgirl

Dude, this is one @%#$ed up movie!

I'm a big zombie buff. So when I heard about this movie I was intrigued. I'm not going to give the plot away much, let's just say it's a movie about a zombie girl, and the real monsters in the movie are the teenage boys that find her. Okay. Are you with me?

So this movie blends scary physical horror with emotional horror. It blends it so well that I have nothing good or bad to say other than my first line of this blog: this movie is fucked up. That's not a negative review, btw. I watched it last night via Netflix streaming. I gave the movie 4 stars. But I'll never go back and watch this movie again because watching a zombie girl get screwed by teenagers for 2 hours is disturbing.

Seriously.

So would I recommend it? I donno. This is some sick, twisted cinema. I would recommend it to people who like horror movies AND who like interesting twists to classic themes AND who could manage to watch some really unsettling film.

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